Friday, February 24, 2017

Idiocy of Donald, The Leakers Edition (updated)

"The FBI is totally unable to stop the national security "leakers" that have permeated our government for a long time. They can't even... 
find the leakers within the FBI itself. Classified information is being given to media that could have a devastating effect on U.S. FIND NOW"
So that was Donald on Twitter this morning.

Most people would understand how stupid this sounds: The conversations and connections between my associates and Russians are classified and Americans do not have a right to know, because it may damage me!

In reality, the intelligence being gathered here is classified to prevent the leak of people and methods involved in gathering the intelligence/evidence, and that hasn't been leaked at all. The true danger of these leaks is that they might compromise the criminal investigation by revealing the identities of those under investigation who might then take measures to stop the intelligence gathering by using E2E encryption and non-trackable communications.

Then there's the curious effect of calling out the FBI leakers.

On the one hand, you're effectively antagonizing people who are already incentivized to leak embarrassing information, and that tends to have an ironic effect. On the other hand, by calling out their information as classified and dangerous, you're giving credence to the leaks themselves.

But here's the dumbest part of all this. Donald loves to tell us about how his unpredictability is an asset to keep his enemies off guard. Yet, his own administration has let it be known how they're going to go after leaks.

How stupid is he? Very.



Add: Well now he's just talking out of his ass. He's just told the crowd at CPAC that the media is manufacturing its sources, which is clearly hypocritical because (1) he routinely manufactures his own "sources" when throwing out accusations; (2) if those sources are fake, then the FBI isn't leaking anything, making his accusation both moot and proof that he talks out of both ends.

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